Is Your Life Feeling Overwhelming and Out of Balance? Try this...

In life we are always searching for the right tools and ideas to help us make our lives meaningful, authentic and rich.  It is like a treasure hunt along our journey in life.

We all have these “aha” moments, and there is this wonderful recognition and you realize in your core, that this new idea or tool you have found is exactly what you need to help you along in your life journey.

As a coach, I come across a lot of ideas and tools, and I test them out to see what works and what doesn’t. It is important to me to discover the right solutions for my clients, so they will get deep value out of our collaborative coaching sessions. A very important idea I came across several years, and have found highly rewarding, is the “Four Rooms of Life”.

My discovery of the “Four Rooms of Life”

Several years ago, Nancy picked up this book on how to live a good life.  She would read to me quotes from this book and there was one that instantly connected for both of us.

It was a quote from a life memoire of a woman named Rumer Godden , and from her book called   “A House with Four Rooms”.

“There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, and those rooms are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”

And for us in that moment, the idea sparked an idea that has created an annual ritual we have done at New Years, for the last two years. 

Here is our annual ritual using The Four Rooms:

Located in San Francisco, near the French Embassy, there is this place called Café De La Presse. It is this wonderful café where you can eat great food, and also purchase French magazines too.  We always request a table in a corner somewhere.   After we order our food, we are ready to begin.

Conveniently, all the tables are covered with white paper – which creates the canvas for our needs.

1. With pens out and ready, we make a big cross to create 4 grids.
2. Next, we label those 4 sections of the quads with the rooms:

·         Emotional
·         Physical
·         Spiritual
·         Mental

So it looks like this when drawn out:

3. Next, under each section, we sit there quietly and write out things we can do to help us connect to and visit those rooms.

What do the answers look like?
Sometimes the answers come out as activities, actions, events goals or dreams, but whatever you write, the main thing is that it should help you feel like we have “visited” each of those rooms.
Be sure to include things you can do daily, weekly and even include one-time events.  

Examples of things I have added to my Rooms:

4. When we are done eating and with our notes, we rip off the part of the paper we wrote on, roll it up, take it home and hang it up where we can see every day.  When I look at the Four Rooms I ask myself: What Rooms am I not visiting enough? What can I do to help me feel more balanced?

How anyone can benefit from this exercise
The magical part of this is how this exercise will be totally different for each individual.  This is an exercise of reflection and listening to your intuition – and only you can provide those answers. 
Simply follow the same steps we did and discover what Rooms need your attention.
While we love doing this at Cafe De La Press once a year,  you can do this exercise anywhere any time you need it.

When you do this exercise yourself I recommend a couple of rules:

• Use this grid as a guide for how to live a happier balanced life.
• When you are feeling off balance, look at this and which room will help you get back to that balance, and select one of your items from that room and do it
• This grid can always be updated if you feel it needs to be
• Trust there are no wrong answers if you feel you have answered honestly and intuitively
• Don’t make this a list of only what you can do for others. The better you take care of yourself – the more energy you will have to help others.
• Every day is a new day, so if you get off track and don’t visit all rooms, be kind to yourself- it’s okay. Just try again tomorrow.
• There will be times where something you list could belong to multiple rooms and that is okay – just list it in the room it most applies too

When you try this exercise  – I would love to hear how it works for you:
+ Did you learn something about yourself you didn’t know?
+ Did you notice that some rooms were easier to make lists for?
+ Did it help you see which rooms you need to spend more time in?